Column Edit Mode can be toggled by Ctrl-Shift-| . Unfortunately, this key combination can not be produced using a German keyboard (and I guess some other keyboards suffer the same problem), because the vertical bar (|) by itself is produced by Holding down the *Right* Alt-Key and pressing '<' (the *left* Alt-Key won't do, and Control-Shift-RightAlt-< is not recognized by Editra.

In general, I think this applies to all special characters, which need to be generated using the Right Alt Key (which is typically labelled "AltGr" on German keyboards): |~{[]}\@€

As the letter "I" also reminds on a vertical line, I suggest that Column Edit Mode is assigned to Ctrl-Alt-Shift-I (i.e. Upper Case "I", not vertical bar), since Ctrl-Shift-I and Ctrl-Alt-I are already taken.